Linux Storage News Archives

Ted Ts'o has submitted all the EXT4 feature changes for the Linux 6.5 merge window. EXT4 this round is seeing various clean-ups, bug fixes, and other enhancements but there is one performance optimization worth calling attention to.

Bcachefs hopes to finally merge in Linux 6.5 while for those wanting a mature Linux file-system with all the bells and whistles, Btrfs is a good candidate worth considering. With Linux 6.5 there is a continuation of the recent Btrfs trend around performance improvements.

Capping off an exciting first day of the Linux 6.5 merge window is a pull request seeking to land the long-in-development Bcachefs file-system into this next kernel version.

Among the early pull requests for the now-open Linux 6.5 merge window is the FS-VERITY pull for that support layer enabling file-systems to leverage transparent integrity and authenticity protections fr read-only files. The FS-VERITY updates for Linux 6.5 are helping to ease the upcoming XFS file-system support.

Among the early pull requests already submitted for the Linux 6.5 merge window that is expected to open next week are the Linux NFS server (NFSD) changes. Notable this cycle is the NFSD and RDMA server code having better NUMA awareness.

Another feature scheduled to be sent in for the upcoming Linux 6.5 kernel merge window is introducing support for provisioning primitives for thinly provisioned storage with the Device Mapper (DM) code.

As another feature on the way for the upcoming Linux 6.5 kernel cycle is the large extent counts feature of the XFS file-system no longer being treated as "experimental" but is now considered safe to deploy.

The Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) is preparing to land async buffered write support into the Linux kernel as another performance win for this flash-optimized file-system.

PuzzleFS is a next-generation container file-system for Linux with fast image building, direct-mount support, and other container-optimized features being worked on by Cisco engineers. And it's written in Rust.

OpenZFS 2.1.12 is now available as the latest version of this out-of-tree ZFS file-system kernel driver that works on Linux now with the latest 6.3 kernel stable series all the way back to the v3.10 kernel. Plus OpenZFS 2.1.12 also works on FreeBSD 12.2 and newer.

Last week XFS users began encountering metadata corruption on the latest Linux 6.3 point releases. Following kernel developers and those testing the kernels on affected hardware over the US holiday weekend, it's believed the issue has been tracked down to one missing patch that is a one line of code being deleted.

Multiple users have been reporting metadata corruption issues on the XFS file-system when upgrading to the Linux 6.3 stable kernel.

IBM engineers have been working through some multi-block allocator improvements for the EXT4 file-system driver. In particular, they aim to address some shortcomings that were discovered when running various tests on IBM POWER hardware with a 64k block size.

In development for over a half-decade already has been Bcachefs as a copy-on-write (CoW) file-system born originally out of the Linux kernel's block cache code. On Tuesday the Bcachefs patch series was sent out for review and hopeful inclusion into the kernel by lead developer Kent Overstreet.

To help facilitate the exploration of the Rust programming language for Linux storage purposes within the kernel, Samsung engineer Andreas Hindborg has published a null block driver written in this memory-safe programming language.

The Device Mapper "DM" subsystem updates have been merged for the in-development Linux 6.4 kernel and it includes some notable performance optimizations.

It sure doesn't feel like it's already been five years since Huawei announced EROFS as a read-only file-system initially designed for Android devices but has proven useful in the mainline Linux kernel to Linux users at large with interesting use-cases also coming up around containers and more. With the in-development Linux 6.4 kernel are yet more improvements to this read-only file-system.

After the patches had been in development for well more than a year, sent out today for the Linux 6.4 merge window are the NFS server (NFSD) changes that include supporting RPC-with-TLS.

The NTFS3 driver developed by Paragon Software that provides read/write support and other modern features for the NTFS file-system with the mainline kernel has seen a new round of changes for Linux 6.4.

In addition to EXT4 seeing some performance optimizations and folio conversion for Linux 6.4, the Btrfs and Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) drivers are also seeing some nice enhancements with this next Linux kernel version.

While often times the EXT4 file-system driver updates for new Linux kernel merge windows can be rather mundane given the maturity of this widely-used Linux file-system, this time around for Linux 6.4 it's a bit more exciting.

Ahead of the Linux 6.3 kernel being potentially released as stable on Sunday, two last minute patches for the Btrfs file-system driver were submitted today to address a pressing problem since Linux 6.2.

OpenZFS 2.1.10 is out as the latest update to this open-source ZFS file-system implementation currently supported on Linux and FreeBSD systems.

The Btrfs scrub code that is used for going through file-system data/metadata to verify checksums and repairing damaged blocks is seeing some improvements come Linux 6.4.

Thanks to forthcoming work out of Red Hat, the Linux 6.4 Device Mapper (DM) code is expected to see some optimization work that can significantly benefit concurrent I/O performance... In one case at least acquiring buffers now about 25 times faster.

In wanting to avoid waiting for pipes via the IOCB_NOWAIT option in order to further enhance IO_uring performance, Jens Axboe has implemented said functionality and in a simple test is seeing 10x to 23x performance improvements.

The BFQ I/O scheduler has long been suited well for MMC/SD card storage devices with a single queue now finally with Linux 6.3 the Kconfig setup will suggest/imply that I/O scheduler to help ensure it gets built.

While in recent days there has been much talk around the new, experimental and currently out-of-tree SSDFS file-system for NVMe ZNS drives, when it comes to a modern flash-optimized Linux file-system today, the Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) continues handling that space well and has been battle-tested via deployment on Android devices and more. With Linux 6.3, F2FS continues to be refined with more fixes and other minor enhancements.

With the EXT4 file-system being quite mature at this stage, with many kernel cycles these days this widely-used file-system just sees bug fixes and other minor work. But for the newly-opened Linux 6.3 cycle, EXT4 is seeing a nice performance boost under certain conditions with direct I/O.

While two years ago in Linux 5.16 multi-actuator hard drive support was merged, with the in-development Linux 6.3 kernel the BFQ I/O scheduler is now seeing some tuning for multi-actuator drives.

Sent out for review on Friday evening were 76 patches implementing SSDFS, the newest open-source Linux file-system and catering to flash-friendly drives and particularly those with NVMe Zoned Namespaces (ZNS) support.

Introduced to the mainline kernel two years ago with Linux 5.12 was the IDMAPPED mounts functionality that is useful from systemd-homed to containers and other use-cases. Since then more Linux file-systems and software has added support for IDMAPPED mounts and it's being furthered along now with Linux 6.3.

The Network File-System (NFS) client and server changes have landed for the in-development Linux 6.3 kernel.

The big batch of Btrfs file-system driver updates for the Linux 6.3 kernel were submitted today by SUSE's David Sterba. As with many kernel cycles, this Btrfs pull includes more performance optimizations as well as new features.

The EROFS file-system updates for Linux 6.3 include introducing a new option for per-CPU KThreads to provide low-latency decompression for speeding up use of compressed EROFS file-systems on Android devices.

The Linux kernel's SystemV file-system support for enabling Xenix FS, SystemV/386 FS, and Coherent FS access is being orphaned and in turn could be slated for removal in the future.

Red Hat continues investing in Stratis Storage as their modern Linux storage solution built atop XFS and LVM with intentions of providing ZFS and Btrfs like functionality but atop a mature and proven base. Released on Tuesday was Stratis 3.5 as the latest version of their Rust-written daemon.

While the much anticipated OpenZFS 3.0 hasn't yet materialized as it was originally hoped for in 2022, OpenZFS 2.x continues on maturing nicely with fixes and other updates to this open-source ZFS file-system implementation currently supported on FreeBSD and Linux systems.

Following the Linux kernel deprecating the ReiserFS file-system and with plans to drop the kernel driver in 2025, the next file-system target being evaluated for whether it should stick around the kernel is the Journaled File-System, JFS.

As part of a New Year's Eve patch deluge, XFS developer Darrick Wong sent out patches working on free space defragmenting support, among other work for further enhancing this mature open-source file-system.

A very nice feature pull request was merged to OpenZFS that can provide a nice performance improvement to this open-source ZFS file-system implementation to kick off the new year.

The NTFS3 kernel driver, which was contributed to the mainline kernel by Paragon Software for read/write NTFS file-system support and other features while being faster than the NTFS-3g FUSE driver, is seeing a number of updates with the Linux 6.2 kernel.

For years XFS has been working toward online repair capabilities for the file-system and it looks like in 2023 that work may finally come to fruition.

Introduced nearly two years ago with Linux 5.12 was IDMAPPED mounts for many innovative use-cases from containers to systemd-homed. With the Linux 6.2 kernel, SquashFS is the latest file-system adding support for IDMAPPED mounts.

With the Linux 6.2 kernel the NFSD code is taking another step closer to removing the older NFSv2 support.

The FUSE kernel code for supporting "File-Systems In User-Space" has ready several updates for Linux 6.2 including some performance optimizations.

For those relying on Microsoft's exFAT file-system for your SD cards or USB flash drives, the kernel driver with Linux 6.2 is capable of handling much faster file and directory creation than on prior versions.

Jaegeuk Kim has ushered in the Flash Friendly File-System (F2FS) updates for the in-development Linux 6.2 kernel, which is headlined by two new features for this file-system.

Microsoft's Christian Brauner has reached the finish line on his work to create a proper VFS POSIX Access Control List (ACL) API with the code now being merged for Linux 6.2.

The Btrfs and EXT4 file-system updates for the Linux 6.2 merge window have been submitted. The Btrfs changes are rather notable with continued performance enhancements as well as making some reliability improvements to its native RAID5/RAID6 modes.